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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27586126">Dirthara Ma: May You Learn!</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hes5thlazarus/pseuds/hes5thlazarus'>hes5thlazarus</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dirthara Ma! [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Humor, Canon Compliant, F/M, Humor, Humorous Ending, Ostwick (Dragon Age), POV Solas (Dragon Age), Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, Solas is alternately depressed and smug</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:48:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,189</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27586126</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hes5thlazarus/pseuds/hes5thlazarus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Exalted Council, Solas stops for a drink and a sulk in a quiet tavern in Ostwick. He is convinced no one will ever recognize him with a full head of hair and a beard. Then the Inquisitor walks in.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Female Lavellan/Solas, Lavellan &amp; Varric Tethras</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Dirthara Ma! [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086839</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dirthara Ma: May You Learn!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He stops for a drink in a tavern in Ostwick’s alienage, because he is tired and no one will remember a quiet elf with gray in his beard as Solas the bald apostate. He stares into his beer and wishes he could drown himself in it. He cannot recognize his own reflection--it has been millennia since he has grown out his hair, and he never wore a beard before. One never ages past vanity. He wonders what Lavellan would think, and drinks. That is not a thought he should let himself complete.<br/>
<br/>
The Winter Palace was a shitshow. There was little he could do to ease the blow, but still, he wishes for the impossible. He wipes his mouth and thinks: I should not have stolen that kiss. But she kissed me back. She was in pain, distraught and terrified. I should not have, but I did. I always do.<br/>
<br/>
She has been warned. The Qunari have been beaten back. He sits, quietly miserable, and listens to the other patrons gossip. If there is one constancy to the People, it is their remarkable ability to disagree. Several of these Ostwick elves think the former Inquisitor a fool for dissolving the Inquisition. A couple of them think it’s an Orlesian plot. Two have it on good authority that she is planning on marrying Briala--which is ridiculous, because they have irreconcilable political differences, Dalish elves cannot marry under the Chantry, and, well, he should want her to move on and be happy with what time he has left to her. He feels affronted, and irritated with them and himself most of all, leans back in his chair and tries to think about something else.<br/>
<br/>
He needs to go to the Sundermount and see what Mythal has left of her temple. Abelas suspects that some of the sleeping may yet be revived. If he is careful, he can rouse them gently so this world will not drive them mad. The Veil is less discordant now. He has resolved some of his mistakes, with the reactivation of his artifacts. Now it is stretched gossamer-thin over Thedas, but not fraying. It will be easier to carry the others across, he hopes. He tires of the corpses of his mad comrades. He misses them. More blood on his hands.<br/>
<br/>
He finishes his drink and orders another. The bartender barely looks at him. Solas has missed this invisibility. Within the Inquisition he was too flamboyantly himself to be ignored, he has always struggled with the humility this age deemed appropriate for an elf and a mage. He has always struggled with humility; even as a child, a temple slave, he stuck out, true to his name. He smiles despite himself. He cannot help but enjoy himself; his own recklessness and arrogance have been his most constant companions. But now he will not tease more rumors out of the storm of quarreling elves at the table next to him. He will not ask the woman who claims she met the Inquisitor, what the Inquisitor was like. How she looks. If she is recovering well, without her arm.<br/>
<br/>
He takes another sip. The ale is bitter, but not bad, and better than Cabot’s. Bull had shown up and gotten him drunk after that disastrous trip in Crestwood. They hadn’t said much, just played chess, game after game, until he lost. He grimaces. He should have seen that knight waiting. He visualizes the board and plays it back hazily. Leliana had given him an Orlesian chess manual before he left, he should have read it, it would be useful to know this age’s names for the plays he practices. He is stewing over the annoying way Iron Bull would double his pawns when a laugh cracks across the room, and his heart stops.<br/>
<br/>
Lavellan walks in, accompanied by Varric and Hawke. She’s laughing. Her hair is longer, graying at the temple, and she wears an ironbark prosthetic that gently hums with ambient magic. She blinks, noticing him staring, and glares at him. Hurriedly he returns to his drink. She does not recognize him. How would she? He can barely see it himself.<br/>
<br/>
They sit across the room from him, too far for him to eavesdrop. No one seems to know a woman who might as well be a god has entered the bar. She looks divine. Hawke and Varric are clearly riffing off each other, and she is enjoying herself, and she has never looked so well when she laughs. She lights a pipe one-handed as Varric gets up to order their drinks, and glances back at him. She’s checking him out. He can’t help but smirk to himself.<br/>
<br/>
Would it be too suspicious if he left? He doesn’t want to go, he needs to go. Lavellan’s now sprawled in her chair, amused as Hawke gesticulates. He gets up for a third drink now, standing behind Varric in line. Varric gets the usual house swill for himself, whiskey for Hawke, and nothing for the former Inquisitor. Solas is surprised. She rarely overindulged, but she always at least sipped at a drink the few times they went to the tavern together. He wonders what has changed. Nothing, perhaps. He does not know everything about her. She held herself back too. It was one of the many reasons why it was so hard to tell her too. He is never quite sure of how she would react.<br/>
<br/>
The bartender asks, “Another?” and he nods silently. He glances at her as he passes. She looks better than he would have thought. She has always been resolute, but the years have softened the harshness of her scars. She is wearing her hair in a loose braid when she always had it tied tightly out of her face. The gray gives her a touch of agelessness. She will look like this for another century, left alone. She will not have five years. The Veil must come down, and he does not know how it will respond to whatever of his magic that is left in her. He knows it will kill him. He should have told her explicitly that she is living on borrowed time.<br/>
<br/>
He stares into his beer and thinks, perhaps I should not. Unfinished, he leaves the beer on the table and forces himself to walk slowly from the room and out into the Ostwick sun. He does not let himself run.<br/>
<br/>
Once he has gone, Lavellan leans forward and tells Varric, “That’s him. Did you get the tracker on him?"<br/>
<br/>
Varric nods. “Athenril should be following him now. But--are you okay? I saw the way he looked at you.”<br/>
<br/>
Lavellan takes a drag from her pipe before responding. “You know he must have thought he was so clever, with that beard. But I could still see the leather strap of that bone necklace he wears, and he didn’t even bother to hide the way he walks. No one swaggers like that, but the Dalish. You would think he would have learned.”<br/>
<br/>
Varric laughed. “He told Vivienne that was an ancient Elvhen curse. ‘Dirthara ma’--may you learn!”</p>
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